


you don't need treats, you don't need tricks

by veridical



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Rescue Bots
Genre: Bickering, Gen, Reluctant Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 15:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3615804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veridical/pseuds/veridical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heatwave was not looking to start a conversation. Nothing prompted him to speak of this. But that didn't mean he had to suffer through this alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you don't need treats, you don't need tricks

**Author's Note:**

> Coda to _What Rises Above_ , I guess.
> 
> The best thing about these two: their dialogue, bickering and insults are canonically so stupid I don't have to try and be _smart_.

"Optimus offered me to join him," he said, and became silent again.

Kade stared at his inner screen. Heatwave thought about telling him he might as well stare right ahead - at the _road_ , dark and muddy and full of rain; not that he actually needed steering, but they all got rather used to pretending, playing this game, - but this was not the time. Humans, apparently, were really fond of seeing each other's faces when talking, which could get rather difficult when this particular human was _inside_ the person he was supposed to be holding conversation with.

Not that Heatwave was meaning to start a conversation.

He was not even sure why he said it. There was zero reason to share this information; after all, he refused the offer, and Optimus being Optimus, he wouldn't make it again, not unless things changed drastically. Nor were his reasons up to a discussion, much less a discussion with his self-centered, unbearable partner.

Kade stared. Heatwave stubbornly kept his screen black.

"Ooookay," the firefighter said. "Right."

There was a pause, long enough to regret ever speaking out.

"Are you sure he was serious?" Kade asked, and Heatwave could've smacked him. Could've smacked himself, for Primus' sake.

"Yeah, you know, you might have missed that, but he's not much of a joking type, _especially during a rescue mission_ ," he growled.

"Okay, okay, whatever you say," Kade put his hands palms up in defeat, and Heatwave happily steered ahead on his own for all of five seconds before there were hands on his wheel again. He was clutching a bit too tightly. Heatwave snorted inwardly. Blades, he would understand, but Kade, worried about driving in the rain?

"I... am guessing he didn't mean a one-time type of a thing. Team up for a mission?.." Kade suggested.

"No," Heatwave replied curtly and shut up again. Whatever; he already said it, might as well enjoy Kade fishing for an answer. He didn't have to suffer through this alone.

Kade very obviously fidgeted. His face screwed up a little. It looked almost funny; it would look funny, in other circumstances. Heatwave felt all his anger focusing on that stupid expression.

"And you..."

"I refused." There. Over. Finished with this stupid unresultful conversation.

"Oh." Heatwave felt Kade sagging into his seat. _Oh_?

Suddenly, his partner looked rather angry, too, just about as much as Heatwave felt, and he  realised he must have voiced that. In a very mocking tone.

"Well, what do you want me to say?" Kade demanded. His hands stayed on the wheel.

"I don't kno-- I don't want you to say anything," he snapped.

"Well then," Kade finished with uncharacteristic awkwardness. They rode silent for a while. 

"Why did you--" his partner started again, and, well, Heatwave’s patience was pretty non-existent in the first place.

"I don't know why I said it, okay!"

"I meant, why did you refuse?"

Heatwave huffed and cursed inwardly. The truck swivelled a bit to the right. "I have a team and a mission, how could I accept?"

"Yeah, but." Kade fixed his inner screen with a pointed glare, and it took everything in the bot's power not to glare back. "Last time I checked, you were _aaall_  about joining good ol' OP," he said, sneer thick in his voice, and what the hell?

Heatwave felt his inner energon nearing its boiling temperature. "Last time you _checked_? Checked _what_?"

To his surprise, Kade finally turned away from the screen - as if it changed _anything_ \- and drummed his fingers on the wheel indecisively. "Duh, you! You are always on about how you amazing it would be to work with Optimus and his team!"

"Well _you_ are always on about how amazing it is to get rid of me!"

"I am _not_!" his partner sputtered. "Not for the last-- month or so!"

"Pffffft, right!"

Kade huffed and crossed his arms on his chest. Heatwave pointedly made a very careful and nice turn.

The firefighter muttered something under the breath.

"Excuse me?"

"I said, show-off."

"Exactly how is taking a road turn safely and securely _showing off_?"

"It is when you do it!"

And Heatwave relished the fact that he knew enough about human perception of age to say, "Sometimes I wonder if Doc's aging device could have possibly just been showing _true age_."

"You giant pile of scrap--"

Kade, Heatwave realised, had a surprisingly good grasp on Cybertronian swearing, or something very close to it. He was ready to soak it all in.

But his partner was silent now, staring at the road without actually looking or seeing. He also bit his lower lip. He was  _thinking_.

It was unsettling, and the firetruck relented. "Look, just drop it. It doesn't matter now," _and I'm an idiot for even speaking of this_. "I didn't take the offer, I _would not_ take it, even..."

"Even though you would drop everything in a heartbeat just a year ago," Kade finished for him, still looking ahead blankly.

Heatwave didn't know what bothered him more - the fact that it was true or the fact that it was Kade saying this. Kade who, for all intents and purposes, did not care _just a year ago_.

Something stopped him from saying this. As much as he was certain it would spite his partner if he pointed this out, it would just put them deeper into the black hole of this conversation.

His windscreen wipers swung a bit slower.

"I don't know why you would think I would leave this assignment - and why it concerns you so much. Things... changed. I'm fine where I am."

There. Serious enough, vague enough.

Kade was still silent. Did he do that on purpose?!

"And Primus knows this team needs me!" Heatwave added, unable to stand it. "Though the possibility of getting rid of you was almost too great to pass up."

He could pinpoint the precise moment Kade's smile became the familiar smug one, but there was a klik before that, when it... wasn't.

And he was ready for something in return - he found himself gearing up, waiting for whatever stupid, insensitive, dumb piece of slag Kade would throw back at him, because this, this was how it worked.

The thought was surprising - it _did_ work, despite the fits of despair that occasionally descended upon him, at times when understanding his partner - or, to be precise, his partner in _general_  - was particularly impossible. Despite the way Kade often seemed intent on stressing just how unnecessary Heatwave's help was. It was fine. The trick was not to care, and just do his job. His job: the rescues, of course, - and the rescues worked. That's why they were here in the first place. Rescues.

And learning.

One time Cody came up to him and cheerfully congratulated him on the fact that he managed to build a nice enough ("amazing!" were his exact words, and "almost as good as Dani and Blades!") team with his jerk of a brother (also paraphrased). Heatwave didn't have the spark to protest, and he thought at the time that maybe, _maybe_  if he pretended for long enough, it would actually become what everyone wanted it to be.

Something _nice_.

Heatwave thought that Kade heard his brother’s words; maybe he was even meant to, maybe that was how Cody's inspirational speech was supposed to work. The boy was perceptive, he had to see that-- that--

That he was wrong. That nothing about this, nothing was the way it was supposed to be. Stupid idea in the first place, Heatwave thought, _stupid mission_  - it echoed. Right. Wasn't that what he had thought so recently?

If he was... learning - if this whole thing, this mission was changing _him_ , - maybe plans and assumptions failed. And different things took their place. Not necessarily nice. Not what everyone wanted. Simply different.

"Glad you didn't leave me to rot away in an old firetruck while others were riding in their top-notch tech," Kade said, finally, words fitting the old pattern well, but they weren’t there anymore, and the rhythm was off, as well as the timing, and Heatwave didn’t mind.

Top-notch tech. Right.

"Don't take it personally," Heatwave grunted, though they both did.

Kade took the whirling turns of a mountain road with ease, and somehow, Heatwave did not feel like telling him to take his hands off the wheel. _The trick is to let him think he's in control._

Maybe the trick could be something else.

  
  
  
  
  
...So when Heatwave spoke, worry and excitement mixed unsettlingly in his voice, of Optimus requesting his presence, urgently, on the mainland, Kade didn't even think before deciding to tag along. Oh, he was no Cody, he couldn't just hide inside one of the bots hoping they would forget about him being there - he didn't want to, first of all. Heatwave could _deal_ with his presence. He wouldn't have much choice short of transforming, opening the door and dropping him out. Kade rather hoped they were past that stage in their relationship.

He had to come along; he had to be sure. He wasn't worried-- pffft, worrying would be the epitome of stupidity. It was Heatwave - the _coolest_  and the hardiest of the Rescue Bots, meeting up with _Optimus_ , who, well, if there were anyone cooler than Heatwave, that would be him. They could deal with anything thrown their way, probably.

But he remembered what Heatwave told him about OP's offer. Worst even, he remembered - cringing, somehow, - the days Heatwave always spoke of leaving this "stupid assignment". The days Heatwave was ready to leave for another mission when it seemed like this one had no hope. To do something great, greater, in any case. He was barely listening, of course, but some bits and pieces slipped through even to him.

And he remembered something gnawing inside in the awful way that always made him eager to grab a sandwich from the nearest fridge. (He was this close to installing a fridge inside Heatwave.) It was the same thing, this time. It must have been important - more important than  lousy weather threatening one small island. It might be important. It might be greater.

It might change Heatwave's mind.

**Author's Note:**

> I was... uncertain about the last bit; maybe I should have expanded on it (maybe I will), maybe I should have let it stand on its own or not at all - I don't know. But they're absolutely interconnected.


End file.
